Interview: What’s It Like To Be A Robot?

That was the starting topic of New York Times reporter Amy Harmon’s interview with Bina48, a cutting edge humanoid robot housed at the Terasem Movement Foundation in Vermont. There’s long way to go before robots develop the conversational skills necessary to blend in with the general public, although they could pass as disturbed weirdos — Bina48’s answers were often confusing, sometimes creepy, and occasionally cheeky.

i am in disbelief. there must be a puppeteer. also, why would they upload the word “um”? it should be erased from the human language, not carried on by computers.

Cerebralcaustic

>why would they upload the word “um”? it should be erased from the human language, not carried on by computers

Scientists who um study this kind of stuff say that fillers, are, like, an essential part of uh language. It might seem, like, totally annoying when people have speech disfluencies, but, in truth, they serve very important purposes, y'know?

perhaps – for those of us who suffer from the anxiety of being constantly interrupted. wouldn't it be nice to carry on a conversation with a partner, or even a group, who have the patience to wait for you to find the right word? of course, you are probably more articulate than i. then again – you quote others an awful lot.

RoboSlayer

Bina48, a cutting edge humanoid robot?? no freaking way. That is a sad animatronic head connected to a equally sad chatbot program. ‘Cutting edge’ in 1990 maybe. Whoever funded that POS got ripped off, could do that myself for under $500.

RoboSlayer

Bina48, a cutting edge humanoid robot?? no freaking way. That is a sad animatronic head connected to a equally sad chatbot program. 'Cutting edge' in 1990 maybe. Whoever funded that POS got ripped off, could do that myself for under $500.